Conference

While East-Central European literary criticism has attained a canonical status in modern literary studies, featuring figures such as György Lukacs in Hungary, Roman Ingarden in Poland, and the Czech scholars and Russian émigrés from the Prague Linguistic Circle, Southeast European literary criticism remains relatively obscure in mainstream academic discussions. However, even if literary theory was not developed in this region with the same coherence as in East-Central Europe, Southeast Europe is arguably the cradle of a specific cultural theory of peripherality. 

To better understand both the status of the cultures in this region and the relevance of their theoretical production, we advance the concept of “subperiphery,” which is yet to receive its application in cultural and literary history. First, this term refers to a cultural and economic periphery that has largely failed to export or contribute the “raw material” for theoretical advances to what are usually seen as the core Western producers of theory. Second, building on Immanuel Wallerstein’s world-systems theory and informed by Galin Tihanov’s conceptualization of what he calls regimes of relevance, we understand the “subperiphery” as characterized by a hybrid regime of relevance that diverges from those defining the literary cultures of East-Central Europe during the same period. Unlike the unambiguous transitions observed in East-Central Europe, the subperiphery remained in a hybrid “aestethnic” state, a term we employ to explore the distinct coexistence of modern and traditional ways of theorizing in Southeast Europe that makes its literary and cultural criticism different from what one can observe in East-Central Europe. Third, the subperiphery is characterized by the “mutual ignorance” of “minor” cultures, indicating that the cultures in this region have not extensively shared ideas with each other. 

Therefore, the subperiphery represents an initial stage of cultural marginality, in which distinct cultures have not yet been fully integrated into the world literary system. Our hypothesis is that this was the case of most critical cultures from the geopolitical region traditionally labeled as the “Balkans” (i.e., including countries like Romania, Bulgaria, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia, Albania, etc.) from the middle of the 19th century until the middle of the 20th century. These countries become actual peripheries only much later, when the import of critical theories and concepts from the West is paralleled by export towards the West, as proven by names such as Tzvetan Todorov, Julia Kristeva, Mihajlo Mihajlov, Darko Suvin, Matei Călinescu, and Thomas G. Pavel.  

However, we believe that the “cultural theory” produced in the Southeast European subperiphery is highly (and even more) relevant today, especially in reshaping discussions on the heterogeneity of world literature, in readdressing the status of “minor” or “insular” knowledge production, and in discussing the phenomenon of “traveling ideas.” For instance, the Romanian critic Eugen Lovinescu’s concept of “synchronism” (sincronism, 1924) can be placed in dialogue not only with the thesis of “accelerated development” (uskorennoe razvitie, 1964) of Bulgarian-Belarussian-Russian scholar Georgii Gachev and with the Croatian critic Svetozar Petrović’s idea of “atypical development” (atipičan razvoj, 1972), but also with Pascale Casanova’s theory of asymmetric “world literary space” and Franco Moretti’s “law” of foreign forms adapted to local contents.

Themes and topics:

We welcome papers that address, but are not limited to, the following areas:

• Historical intersections and divergences in literary criticism and cultural development in Southeastern Europe;
• The role of “Balkan” cultural theorists and critics in shaping ideas in Europe and beyond;
• Studies in different Southeast European “regimes of relevance” across space and time;
• The development of world “literary subperipheries” beyond Europe;
• Comparative nation-building narratives and their reflection in literature and criticism;
• The evolution of the Balkan subperiphery into a part of a larger constellation of centers and peripheries;
• The impact of geopolitical changes on literary theory and cultural criticism, particularly relating to the impacts of WWI, WWII, and the Cold War era;
• Analysis of key literary figures and critical works that shaped the cultural landscapes of Southeastern Europe;
• The role of literature in the formation of national identity and the negotiation of external cultural domination;
• Colonial, postcolonial, decolonial narratives of cultural development in Southeastern Europe.

Keynote speakers:

•             Vladimir Biti, University of Vienna
•             Diana Mishkova, Center for Advanced Study, Sofia
•             Rastko Močnik, University of Ljubljana/ Singidunum University, Belgrade

Please submit a 250-word abstract along with a brief bio (100 words) to andrei.terian@ulbsibiu.ro and stefan.baghiu@ulbsibiu.ro by 05.03.2025 21.03.2025 (EXTENDED DEADLINE). Proposals should include the title of the paper, the main arguments, and the methodologies employed. E-mails should have the title “STRASYN 2025 Conference.” Notifications of acceptance will be sent by 10.03.2025. 

The conference “Theorizing (Sub)peripheries: Strategies of Synchronization in Southeast European Literary and Cultural Criticism” is organised within the research grant STRASYN (https://grants.ulbsibiu.ro/strasyn/).